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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Coalition cracks

At the annual Herzliya Conference on Mon night, two major
Government Coalition partners, Yair Lapid, Head of the Yesh Atid party, and
Naftali Bennett of the Bayit Yehudi party, gave contradictory opinions
in speeches on policy towards the Palestinians. Lapid threatened that if the
Government annexes any West Bank land he will bolt the coalition, but Bennett
said that if the Government does not annex land he will bolt the
coalition. The irony is that these two relative newcomers to Israeli politics
once forged an alliance in order to get mutually beneficial conditions from
Netanyahu when the Coalition was formed. In response,
Netanyahu issued a statement criticizing "inexperienced" politicians who push
their own foreign policy solutions, without any previous familiarity in the area
of international relations and have no idea of the consequences of their hastily
proposed plans.

Since the talks between Israel and the PA have broken
down, and no party is willing to talk to a Palestinian unity government that
includes Hamas, the question is what to do next. Now their different political
interests have come to the fore, with Lapid on the left and Bennett on the right
of the Coalition. In addition, the presence of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni in
the Coalition has become an embarrassment, since she was in charge of the talks
with the Palestinians and now effectively she has no political commonality with
Netanyahu. Her unauthorized "private" meeting with Pres. Abbas in London after
the United PA government was formed almost led to her dismissal from the
Coalition. She and her Hatnuah party are hanging by a thread. Will the
Coalition unravel?

Probably not, since none of these small parties want to
subject themselves to a future election, especially if they are forced into the
opposition. But, this leaves Netanyahu paralysed, unable to act to either annex
some territory, that would become part of Israel in any future peace agreement,
or respond in any other way. So either Netanyahu will do nothing and keep his
Coalition in place, or he will decide to act and perhaps lose the left wing of
his Coalition, Livni and Lapid, but maybe in their place he will gain partners
on the right, namely the religious and ultra-orthodox parties. It's in the
balance.